


you're gonna be here for it

by bbuckyy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sparrow Academy (Umbrella Academy), Brotherly Love, Coming Out, Gen, Mild Transphobia, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Gets A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Post-Season/Series 02, Sort Of, Trans Diego Hargreeves, Trans Male Character, but just some little details, its not malicious tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbuckyy/pseuds/bbuckyy
Summary: when five first jumps to the apocalypse, he sees his siblings as he expected they'd be at 30. all except one, that is.five comes to terms with missing diego's coming out and transition
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves
Comments: 8
Kudos: 182





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hello! so five says some.... unwoke stuff in this, nothing ill-intended or mean, he's just uneducated. i figure that he was a thirteen-year-old in 2002, so he's probably not very well-versed in gender theory.   
> please no incest clowning in the comments!!

Five could feel the energy pulsing from his palms, through the gaps in his fingers as he curled his hands into tight fists. There was something distinctly exhilarating about telling Reginald off like that. Now he ran down whatever street it was he had jumped too (he was too excited to really care) and felt that familiar tug build up in his ribcage. He followed that tug, pulled it back, let it launch him forward to… spring, it looked like. Christ, he had done it! He balled up his hands, wrapped himself around the tug and jumped to winter. Twenty seconds ago he had been in an unusually warm November, now here he was, running down the street with gentle snowfall landing in his hair. He gaped at the world around him, let that energy build back up, followed it, and-

Jesus Christ. What happened? All around him were ruins. Crumbled buildings and decades-old scaffolding set ablaze, the sky scorched a dusty grey. Five stopped in his tracks. Instead of that breezy March he had just visited, or the biting chill of winter he ran through, the world he stood in now was dry and hot, completely devoid of life. He took a tentative step forward and felt a rustle under his shoe; a newspaper. _April 1, 2019_ , the date read. Seventeen years, he had jumped. Seventeen years and it led him here.

He clenched his fists, searched around inside him for that energy, that tug that would get him home, but he found nothing. He felt sweat forming on his brow as he tensed himself, trying to find that blue glow that would save him, but there he stood, a normal, non-glowing thirteen-year-old in a wasteland.

He saw beside him a street sign. _36th and Wharf St._ God, he knew where he was, he was only a few blocks from the Academy! He found his bearings and sprinted towards his home and prison, begging whoever would listen to let him find something, _anything_ other than ruins.

Turned out no one was listening, though. Laying on top of the rubble was the iron gate bent into the shape of an umbrella. The Academy had been flattened, just like the rest of the world. Five felt his breathing quicken, panicking at the thought of losing his last chance to survive this… _apocalypse_.

“ _Vanya! Ben! Dad! Anyone!_ ” He looked around the ruins of his home and saw no one.

Except for a hand. A hand sticking out under a crumbled stone pillar, bearing a tattoo on the forearm. He ran over to it, not caring if he tripped on rubble as he excavated the body from the debris. Finally, he could make out a face. It was gaunt, with a scraggly goatee and curly hair, black eyeliner smudged around the eyes. _Klaus_ , Five thought. He looked up, and saw a foot across what used to be the foyer. Brown skin peeked out from beneath fitted jeans and black kitten heels. He clawed his way through the wreckage, and saw tight curls around a beautiful woman’s face. _Allison_. Next he found what he assumed to be Luther, judging by the blond hair and ridiculous muscles. Ben, Vanya, Dad, Pogo, Grace, all of them were nowhere to be found. Lying beneath a splintered oak door, though, was a stranger. The man had tightly shaved hair and a respectable goatee, and wore a ridiculous harness adorned with every manner of knife Five could think of. He grabbed the man’s left arm, rolled up the sleeve and… there it was.

It couldn’t be Vanya, her lips weren’t nearly as full as the body in front of him, and she certainly could never be as tall. He didn’t have the right skin tone to be Ben, so that left Carmen. Maybe that name wasn’t right anymore. Five sat back on his heels and looked at the body in front of him. He supposed it made sense, somehow. He and Carme- _Two_ had never been close, but Five knew how much she (he?) always hated that uniform skirt, and the expectations to be a strong Hargreeves sister.

He lay a hand on Two’s face and felt his eyes start to sting. God, he had missed so much, and he had no way to get back.


	2. Chapter 2

Two weeks and a hell of a lot of coffee later and things were… normal, for the most part. Sure, Five’s body was 45 years younger than it had been a fortnight prior, but the important thing was that he had his family back. The Hargreeves had fallen into a strange sort of normalcy after saving the world and the timeline; for the most part, they all lived in the Academy again. Klaus had technically been homeless before this all started, Luther had lived on the goddamn moon, and Five was physically thirteen, so none of them had many options for living situations. Vanya wanted to distance herself from her past, and Diego had realized how truly shitty it was to live in the back room of a boxing gym, so that just left Allison to get her own apartment. She was adamant that she wanted to be with her siblings as much as possible, but the divorce court ruled she needed to have a stable living situation to have visitation with Claire. 

And of course, Ben was gone. Five walked past his old bedroom on the way to the staircase leading to the foyer, and never could stop himself from peeking in. It was frozen in time the same way he was: forever a door into the life of a lonely seventeen-year-old trying to cope with an abusive father figure and his own inhumanity.

Five’s days had developed an oddly comforting schedule: wake up too early for a thirteen-year-old and too late for a 58-year-old, have coffee with Luther, spend the day reading or revelling in being with his family again, dinner with all his siblings, and in bed by 11:30. He knew that other people his age were either in seventh grade or halfway through a prostate exam, but he found solace in the Academy, especially now that dear old Dad was gone. 

There was something he was yet to address, however: Diego. 

Five only learned his name by reading Vanya’s (slanderous) book, and it took him far longer than he’d like to admit to stop calling him a ‘she’. He would be lying if he didn’t say he let himself mess up sometimes, allow himself to call Diego ‘Carmen’ again, just so he could pretend he was back in 2002, and everything was exactly the way he left it. Now, though, he didn’t have that luxury.

He had to face his shortcomings head-on whenever he asked Diego to pass the coffee pot, or he saw him walking shirtless from the bathroom after a shower with his newly flat chest on display for all to see. Five had to fight the urge to look away in shame, or to stare at his ~~sister’s~~ brother’s sharp jawline. He knew that whichever path he chose would only end in awkwardness and humiliation, so he decided to simply avoid Diego whenever possible. Sure, it wasn’t the most polite option, but at least he could escape whatever sappy, emotional conversation was in store if he slipped up while Diego was around.

If there was one thing that Five had learned in the last 45 years, though, it was that he couldn’t run away from his problems forever.

Going through puberty once already meant that Five knew that his pubescent body was about to start overloading his body with hormones, and he was incredibly prone to acne. It was a chore, but Five knew that unless he wanted to go through constant red itchiness for a _second_ time, he had to commit to a steady skincare routine. Allison managed to get him some high-quality face wash and moisturizer and whatever-the-fuck-else through some brand deal she’d done on social media, so he spent fifteen minutes every morning and night rubbing different serums and elixirs into his face until he felt slimy and raw.

It was a Tuesday, if he recalled correctly, when _It_ happened. He was doing his morning routine in one of the upstairs bathrooms, still in his pajamas (Klaus called them “old man pjs”, but Five thought they were too comfortable to care), when Diego walked in, bare-chested and stood in front of the mirror besides him. Just as Five looked up from applying his coconut-scented moisturizer, he saw Diego drag a razor across his cheek, making a clear line through the shaving cream covering his face and defining his goatee. Five hadn’t even had his morning coffee, and he was too tired to notice that he was staring at Diego’s reflection and curling his hands ever so slightly into fists. 

Diego brought his hand down to rest on the counter tentatively, not breaking eye contact with his reflection. “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer.”

Five blinked and looked away, pretending to busy himself with packing up his ointments and creams. “Uh. Sorry.”

“S’alright. I, um…” Diego sighed and looked down at Five beside him, “it must be a lot.”

“I guess.” Five rocked on his heels, “Uh, when- when did you-”

“Come out?” Diego cut him off. “Couple years after you disappeared.”

“Ah. I see.”

“When you saw me, in the… you know, did you recognize me?”

Five sighed. What a question. “Not at first, no. You were wearing a shirt that covered your tattoo, I had no clue who you were. For a while after I figured it out, I just called you ‘Two’, but then I read your name in Vanya’s book, and…”

“Gotcha.”

Five knew that they would hit this roadblock whenever he imagined this conversation. They’d say the polite stuff, both want to address the uncomfortable muck that is their relationship as (new) brothers, but neither of them would know how to proceed. Five was too old and impatient to wait around for Diego to break the ice though, so he figured he might as well take the plunge.

“I’m an old man, Diego,” Five said, feeling his voice break embarrassingly, “I’m ashamed to say I’m a bit… uneducated. What with the apocalypse and all. Sorry if this comes off as rude, but I… I don’t think I understand completely what it is this all… is.” He gestured to Diego vaguely, avoiding eye contact.

“Yeah, that, uh, that makes sense.” Diego sighed and set his razor down on the counter, bracing his hands against the edge of the granite, face still half-covered in shaving cream. “So, I’m tra-transgender.” ( _It never gets easier saying that_ , Diego had thought to himself). “Didn’t really jive with the ‘woman’ thing, so I… did all this. Cost a lot of friends and a lot more money, but, you know, here we are.”

Five stared up at him, brow furrowed. “When? Uh, when did you go through with it all?”

Diego huffed, “Uh, changed my name legally in 2008, went on hormones 2012, and I’ve had these bad boys,” he looked down and patted his bare pecs, “since last year.”

Five stared up at his brother, really took him in. He was certainly more muscular than the last time they had seen each other, though Five wasn’t sure if it was Diego himself or the hormones he was on that was responsible for that. His shoulders had widened out a bit, his frame becoming more solid, more firm. Beneath his pecs ran two scars, perfectly straight, the skin only slightly puckered beneath Diego’s nipples. His face was much more angular and square, brows thicker and jaw more pronounced. He had shaved his hair down short again, once more revealing that scar that ran across his temple. And God, how could Five ignore that beard? It wasn’t long or particularly bushy, but it was thick and well-taken care of. Five absentmindedly remembered the moustache he had been so proud of two weeks ago. 

Five furrowed his brow and looked around the sink, trying to find the right words to not come across as ignorant or rude. “How, um, did you know?”

Diego dragged the razor once more across his other cheek, scraping off stubble and shaving cream to leave a clean line between his skin and his goatee, “Took a while, to be honest. Dad didn’t really foster a very open-minded environment ‘round here, so I didn’t really know what it was. And then once I did figure it out I had to keep it to myself for a while. First person I told was Klaus, naturally, ‘cause of all his…” Diego gestured vaguely.

“Yeah.”

“I waited to tell everyone else, though. Kept coming up with excuses for why I shouldn’t, but they all found out eventually.”

Five hummed nondescriptly, leaning against the off-white tile wall beside him so he could face his brother. He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not, but he thought that Diego looked remarkably similar to the last time Five had seen him, back in 2002. That scar that ran through his left eyebrow was from crashing through a stained-glass window during a museum robbery in '98. He still kept his nails trimmed short, and had that same intense look in his eye as he had had all those years ago.

"You didn't answer my question,”Five said.

Diego wiped his face off with a towel and raised an eyebrow at his brother.

"How did you know?" Five repeated.

Diego huffed. "Why do you care?"

"Because l missed it the first time!" Five didn't mean to raise his voice like that, but it felt like he came to that realization at the same time he said it. He feIt energy building up inside his fists, trembling with anger he didn’t know he had. “I missed it the first time, and I’m only now getting to meet my brother, alright?” He let out a shaky breath, ashamed at his outburst. He felt so small, so weak compared to his brother. Diego was strong and masculine and everything that Five was two weeks ago.

Diego stared at him and sighed. “Jesus, Five, I… I don’t know what to tell you. I fuckin’ hated myself, so I changed. Simple as that. I-” he swallowed and looked around the room, searching for the right words, “I needed to be a man. None of me was right. I had to do something about it.”

The air between them was thick and filled with words unsaid. Five felt like he could relate to Diego, in some strange way. Being a man, but not looking the part, being stuck in a body that wasn’t his own. Helet out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. God, he had been so naïve. He had thought that all he had to do was clench his fists tight, go back in time, save the world, and then he would be done. He could just exist with his family without any conflict. Boy, had he been wrong. 

He had missed so much.

Five cleared his throat after staring into Diego’s eyes for probably way too long. “Right. Thank you for… answering my questions. Good talk, Diego.” Five made his way toward the door, but a hand on his chest stopped him dead in his tracks.

“You don’t have to miss anything else.” For all the shit he got for that intense look in his eyes, Diego really knew how to look soft when he needed to. He lowered his voice and knit his eyebrows together. “You’re gonna be here for the rest of it.”

Five swallowed, not tearing away from Diego’s gaze. “Mmm-hmm.” 

“No, not ‘mmm-hmm.’ _You’re gonna be here for it_.” Diego placed a firm hand on Five’s shoulder and pulled him into his chest, arms wrapping solidly around Five’s tiny frame. 

Five was stunned, frozen solid, confused by his older brother, who used to be his younger sister, towering over him, squeezing him so tightly he was almost claustrophobic. He simply let Diego hold onto him (and he would never admit that he brought his own arms around Diego’s waist). If he was being honest, he didn’t believe Diego when he said that. Five was so used to missing his family’s lives he was sure that the pattern would only continue. But here, standing in the bathroom, smelling freshly of coconut-scented moisturizer, Five almost let himself trust his brother.

**Author's Note:**

> hope y'all enjoyed it! comments make my day :-)


End file.
